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IBM Corp. is offering a scaled-down version of its TotalStorage NAS Gateway designed for departments and small businesses that want a lower priced disaster recovery system.

The new TotalStorage NAS Gateway 500 is a network-attached storage (NAS) system in a single processor configuration that starts at less than US$40,000, according to IBM officials. The revised product comes six months after IBM first introduced its NAS gateway system, which utilizes a clustered engine configuration with up to eight POWER4+ microprocessors.

While the new version relies on a single processor, it allows customers to begin with a small system and scale up to a fully redundant and resilient infrastructure, said David Vaughn, IBM’s worldwide product manager for NAS. “Customers really give up nothing by going with the single processor version because we offer the same enterprise class management features as we do on the multi-processor versions,” he said.

IBM also announced that it now supports three modes of mirroring over IP networks with the TotalStorage NAS Gateway. These include asynchronous, synchronous mode and Mirror Write Consistency (MWC). Other enhancements include support for additional Windows environments and EtherChannel and IEEE 802.3ad Link Aggregation in environments where two NAS Gateway 500s are clustered. IBM has also added several management features, including the ability for users to track, manage and restore individual snapshot files.

“Our goal here is to give users the ability to scale up as their requirements change and to give them a product with the same management tools as their enterprise storage systems,” Vaughn said.